


Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?

by 0bviousLeigh



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Dub names, Family Feels, Gen, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 13:53:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6959365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bviousLeigh/pseuds/0bviousLeigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We only have each other, it's just you and me. What are we gonna do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching Frozen videos with the kid I look after and I was struck by the similarities between Anna and Elsa and the Kamishiro/Kastle twins. So this happened.

It started when the twins were toddlers, their parents call it "The distraction technique". The two of them would get in a fight, or get hurt, or be disappointed, and their parents would distract them with something fun that they could all enjoy together. A game, a pot of hot chocolate, an outing to the park. The night Reginald gets hurt when the suit of armor falls on him is the worst incident in all the twins’ eight years. Rio won’t stop crying, even after Reginald’s shoulder is bandaged and the suit of armor is moved to the front hall.

“You’re not the one who got hurt,” Reginald grumbles, wiping blood off his card.

Rio _wails_ and mom gives Reginald a look.

“Well she wasn’t!” Reginald whines.

Mom wipes Rio’s cheeks. “I’m sure she was just scared. Is that what happened, princess?”

Rio gasps and chokes out, “It’s all my fault!”

Their parents look bewildered.

“Honey, it was an accident,” dad says.

Rio shakes her head. “I took Reginald’s card, he was chasing me, and we bumped the suit of armor…” she lets out another loud wail. “I’m sorry, Reginald!”

Her hysterics start to bring Reginald to tears. He always feels so helpless when his sister cries. “I don’t blame you,” he says, and he really doesn’t, he knows it was an accident.

Mom looks around and her face lights up. “Rio, look! The snow got deeper!” She smiles at Reginald. “Now weren’t you asking me earlier if you could go build a snowman? Rio, why don’t you go outside with Reginald and make a snowman for your brother?”

Rio slowly stops crying. She sniffles, hiccups, and rubs her eyes. “Will you come with me, Reggie?”

Reginald nods, he would never pass up a chance to play in the snow.

Their parents bundle up as well and sit on the patio while Reginald and Rio scamper about. The snow reaches the tops of the twins’ boots, and soon their socks are soaking wet, not that either of them care. Reginald’s shoulder still hurts, so he uses one arm to help Rio pack snow together to make the bottom of the snowman. Rio is still sniffling, so finally Reginald uses his good arm to shove her over.

“Hey!” Rio cries as she topples to the side.

Reginald sticks his tongue out at her. “There, now we’re even.”

Rio finally smiles. It takes them a while, but they finally get the snowman built, and their parents bring them some buttons, a carrot, and a scarf and hat they keep on hand for all the snowmen that will be built in the backyard.

“Do you feel better now, my little prince?” Mom asks. Reginald nods, and she turns to Rio. “And you, my princess?”

“Much better,” Rio says.

Mom smiles and puts her arms around their shoulders. “No one can be sad when they make a snowman, remember that my darlings.”

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m sorry, your parents are gone.”

Gone.

Reginald stares down at his hands, fighting tears. Gone. But how? How can someone just be taken away?

Rio starts screaming and thrashing. She’s in danger of dislodging her IV, and the nurses are about to tranquilize her when Reginald yells at them to stop.

“Give me my sister!” He yells, hands out towards her.

The nurses unhook Reginald from the various monitors wired to his body and move him into Rio’s bed. Rio throws herself on Reginald and sobs into his shoulder. At that point, Reginald can no longer hold back his own tears. They hold each other and cry for hours. The nurses move around them, putting the monitors back on Reginald’s body, giving them new IVs, and changing their bandages.

A police officer comes to see them in the middle of the night, after the two of them have spent their tears. The officer tells them that a friend of their parents will be coming to talk to them soon, and when they’re both healed up they can go home. A doctor tries to make the two of them go back into separate beds, but Reginald and Rio refuse to let go of each other. Finally the nurses tell the doctor to back off, it’s fine if they want to be together. The nurses tuck the two of them in and tell them to yell if they need anything.

The hospital room is dark and scary. Reginald squeezes his eyes shut and hopes he’s dreaming.

“I want mom and dad,” Rio whispers.

Reginald can’t even begin to think of how to comfort her.

 

* * *

 

 

Its several months before Rio and Reginald are discharged from the hospital. During that time they receive physical therapy, emotional counseling, and visits from social workers. The family lawyer tells them that according to their parents’ will, they inherit everything—the various estates, the money, the corporation—when they turn twenty. Until then, they will be cared for by the family maid. Their parents have made sure they’ll be taken care of, and nothing in their lives will change. Except for the fact that they’re orphans now.

Snow covers the ground when the twins take their first steps outside together. A middle-aged lady meets them, and Reginald recognizes her—she’s the maid the lawyer told them about, she’s been with them since they were babies.

“Oh my darlings!” She cries, holding out her arms. Rio runs to her, but Reginald follows slowly. When she hugs him, Reginald starts to tear up again and he squirms away.

The woman also has tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you, there was just…there was so much to take care of. The master and…I mean, your parents…the funeral…”

“They’ve been buried?” Rio asks.

The woman nods. “Yes, sweet. It had to be done.”

Iris—that’s the woman’s name, Reginald remembers. He’s always liked her name.

“I want to see,” Rio says. She looks at Reginald. “Don’t you? We should go to their grave.”

Reginald nods, because it’s what Rio wants.

But when they get to the graveyard and stand in front of the family tomb, Reginald’s not even sad. He feels like someone took everything away from him, even his insides. He feels…empty. Like he’s not a real person. He’s filled with cotton fluff and he doesn’t even have a heart. He starts to wonder if any of this is real, or if he’s just stuck in a dream and he’ll wake up in a grave. He can’t breathe and his hands start to go numb, like he’s about to have a panic attack. He sucks in a deep breath and grabs Rio’s hand. She holds on tight.

‘ _Rio is real,_ ’ Reginald thinks. ‘ _I know that I love her. I have to be strong for her, because I always have been. I’m going to keep her safe this time._ ’

“I’m going to keep you safe this time,” Reginald says out loud.

Rio looks at him with watery eyes. “This time?” She repeats.

Reginald doesn’t know why he said that, but he nods. “Yes, I promise. It’s just you and me now.”

 

* * *

 

 

The first night in the mansion is unbearable. The two of them share a room, but it doesn’t make the house feel less scary. It feels unfamiliar, cold, and too big. Reginald dreams about falling through the floor and into a cold, dark pit. He wakes up screaming, and so does Rio. Iris comes in and holds them, but they don’t go back to sleep. After a week of nightmares, Rio begins sleepwalking. Twice she tries to walk out the front door and trips the security system. After a month in the mansion, Reginald calls the family lawyer and says that he and Rio want to move.

They can’t sell the mansion, not until they’re twenty and it belongs to them, but the Kastle family has lots of properties around the country. The lawyer takes them to an apartment in the center of Heartland city, where he says the family would stay during summer.

“You can see the water from here, do you remember it?” he asks as he opens the door. Rio runs in first, dragging Reginald by his hand.

It’s smaller than the mansion. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one big kitchen and living room. There’s a big window in the living room, and they can see the water from it. They can also see Heartland tower, and the whole city lit up with holiday lights. Reginald does remember it, but only vaguely. He mostly remembers staying here with Rio and Iris, not so much their parents. He feels like they stayed in the apartment when their parents went on business trips. Even so, the place has been kept at the ready for them and is set up to be lived in. They can move in right away.

The first night, Reginald and Rio share a room again. Neither of them are scared, but they find that they simply can’t sleep. At 2 AM, Rio sits up in bed.

“Reginald?”

“Yeah?”

Rio looks at him with tears in her eyes. “I want to build a snowman.”

They get dressed as quietly as they can. Reginald grabs a key, and they slip out the front door. The lights are on in the apartment complex’s hallways, but the twins move slowly and look around every corner before they go forward. They cling to each other’s hands until they get outside.

“It’s snowing,” Rio realizes.

The city is so quiet, it almost feels like there’s only the two of them left in the world. Rather than lonely, the thought is almost comforting. Reginald kneels down and makes a snowball. They build their snowman in silence, not even talking when they start to stack the pieces on top of each other. They build one snowman, then another, and another, and one more, until they have a four-person family. For a moment they stand in totally silence and stare at the four snowmen. Then with a sudden yell, Reginald charges at one of them and breaks it down. Rio rushes forward and breaks another, and together they break the third. They kick the snow and fling it at anything in sight—parked cars, litterbots, street signs. They cry and scream, but nobody comes outside to see what’s going on.

Finally only one snowman remains. Rio wipes her eyes and pulls off her hat. She puts it on the snowman’s head. Reginald gives it his scarf.

“Let’s go back inside,” Reginald says.

They walk back hand in hand, but not because they’re scared. They don’t peek around corners or tiptoe through the halls. In the apartment they take off their snowy clothes, change, and go back to bed. They curl up together and fall asleep, and for the first time neither of them have any nightmares.

 

* * *

 

It’s winter when the fire nearly kills Rio, and the ambulance almost spins out on black ice on the way to the hospital. Reginald watches the first snowfall from the intensive care unit’s windows. He catches a few flakes on a piece of paper and shakes them into Rio’s palm. They melt on her skin and she doesn’t even stir. Rio loves the snow, there’s no way she would miss the chance to go out and enjoy it. If she was awake she would run outside and catch snowflakes on her tongue, make snow angels and an army of snowmen, and finish the day with a cup of hot chocolate.

It snows nonstop for a week, and the sun comes out on the day that Rio is finally transferred to a long-term care wing. The Kastle family’s money pays for all of Rio’s treatments and assures that she’ll be given the best. Doctors tell Reginald that his sister will be cared for. She’ll be fed (through a tube), kept comfortable (moved so she doesn’t get bedsores), and always be treated with respect (bathed by strangers with a sponge and a bucket). She may be in a coma, but she’s breathing on her own and her vitals are good. Science says that it’s possible for Rio to wake up at any time, but science can’t say exactly when it will happen. It could be a week, a year, maybe five years.

Reginald has always been part of a set. There has never been just Reginald, it’s always Reginald and Rio. But Rio is unresponsive, lying in a hospital bed with gauze wrapped around her face to protect her eyes. And who knows how bad that damage is? If Rio does wake up, she may never see again.

‘ _I couldn’t save her,_ ’ Reginald thinks. Over and over, ‘ _I promised to protect her and I didn’t._ ’

When visiting hours end, the nurses walk Reginald to the door. The have rules, this isn’t a hospital where the Kastle name means Reginald can stay as long as he wants. He has to go home, back to the apartment. Once again, Reginald faces returning to a place that will feel emptier. Rio might not be dead, but he is she really with him if he can’t hear her voice, or see her at the end of each day, or bicker with her on the way to a tournament?

The walk home is unbearably lonely. Reginald keeps thinking that he sees movement from the corner of his eye, and he turns with his heart racing, hoping it’s her, but it never is. He makes a detour to the park, the one Rio loved to walk in when it snowed. No one has shoveled, and the drifts are up to his waist. Reginald starts to build a snowman, but he gives up halfway through. Is there any point in being happy when he doesn’t have a twin to share it with? His mother was wrong, there are plenty of people who can be sad while building a snowman.

Reginald cries the rest of the way home, hiding his face in a scarf.

 

* * *

 

 

When Rio wakes up from her coma, Reginald takes a week off from school and arranges a vacation to a snowy mountain resort.

“Seems an odd choice, it’s almost fall,” Rio says.

“Well, you missed enough winters,” Reginald says, “And you shouldn’t have to wait for it. Since I can’t make it snow here, I’ll bring you to the snow.”

Rio smacks his arm and calls him a sap, but she has tears in her eyes.

As soon as they get to the resort, they jump right into winter fun. They go skiing, snowboarding, and they build a huge snowman. The resort offers areas for building small fires, and Reginald and Rio reserve one. They get some marshmallows and huddle together as they roast them. The distance from the city gives them an amazing view of the stars, and they spend a long time looking up at the sky.

“You know something,” Rio says suddenly, “I think this is the happiest I’ve been since mom and dad died.”

Reginald nods. “Yeah, me too.”

Rio lays her head on his shoulder. “You’re not going to start ignoring me when we go home, are you?”

Reginald pokes her leg. “Nah, I would never.”

Rio looks at him doubtfully. “You’ll walk to school with your little sister?”

Reginald crosses his fingers inside his mittens. “Sure I will.”

Rio gets to her feet. “Good, now come on, I wanna make another snowman before we go inside.”

 

* * *

 

 

When Frozen comes out in theaters, Rio drags Reginald to go see it. At first they think the song Anna sings is funny, even ironic.

Then the ship sinks. The parents are buried. Anna goes to beg her sister to come out.

_“We only have each other,_   
_It's just you and me._   
_What are we gonna do?_

_Do you wanna build a snowman?”_

They leave the theater after that. Rio weeps openly on the walk back to their apartment. Reginald waits until he’s inside to cry. They never discuss the movie again.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so now I can say this--the first thing that popped into my head when I thought of the twins and Frozen was Rio and Reginald building a snowman together right after their parents die. HAHAAAAAAAA I’M GOING TO HELL!
> 
> I'm not sure why I chose to use the dub names. I guess because I kind of know more about the legal rights of orphans and the medical system in America versus Japan? Not like it matters, nothing in the series makes real-world sense.


End file.
